Subject: using lockf with pine?

From: Dave Rasmussen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 20:49:49 -0600

My site wants to use lockf as the primary locking scheme across mail platforms.
What do I have to do to configure pine to do this? I saw in c-client/flock.c
what appears to be code to do this, but I am currently confused what to
set where in the configuration, which turns out to be on Digital Unix 
(have been using OSF as the config)

??
/

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 00:39:34 -0800

> (have been using OSF as the config)

There is no configuration to set here.

lockf() is not a system call.  The system calls in question are flock()
and fcntl().  flock() is the appropriate call on OSF/1.

flock() is a no-op over NFS.  This is OK, since the only locks maintained
by flock() are locks for mechanisms that can't work over NFS anyway.  No,
you do not want to do multiple simultaneous shared read/write access using
NFS.

You don't want to do fcntl() locking if you have flock().  fcntl() tries
to lock over NFS, but attemping to use this capability will cause a
cluster-wide hang.  Trust us, not the vendor; it doesn't work.  If your
vendor says it does work, get him to commit to it in writing, and commit
to giving you lots of free hardware when it fails.  ;-)

The primary lock for UNIX mbox format files is the .lock file, which does
work over NFS.

-- Mark --	Read http://www.imap.org for the "best kept secret in email"

DoD #0105, R90/6 pilot, FAX: (206) 685-4045  ICBM: N 47 39'35" W 122 18'39"
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.